Doubly false

Up the Hudson river—no matter how far—stands a mansion that would be wonderfully beautiful in any country where the leaf never falls. In the summer time it is a splendid place enough even here, for its walls are of pure white marble, and its architecture Grecian, which gives you an exquisite idea of coolness and grace scarcely possessed by any other habitation. It is not exactly a palace, though many a queen has contented herself in a home less spacious. But the tall Corinthian pillars that gleam through the trees—the balconies sculptured like snow-wreaths—windows of solid plate glass, so clear that you scarcely know when they are open or shut—and cornices wrought with no common chisel, or designed by no common brain, give you an idea of splendor scarcely less than royal.

The grounds, too, convey an impression of foreign lands, for it is the first week in September, and all around this dwelling, arrayed in wonderful contrast, is the cool green of closely rolled sward and trees splendidly grouped, sheltering the blaze and glory of flowers born in every known country that the sun shines upon. A lawn, large enough for a small farm, rolls with green breaks and undulations to the edge of a precipice which terraces it from the river.

Hot-houses and graperies form long avenues of rolling glass, which the sunshine turns into waves of glittering silver at noonday, and kindles up with bright golden fires for an hour before the night closes in. A stretch of woodland lies to the left, full of shadowy dells and green nooks, where splendid ferns and young wintergreen are found in abundance. Here nature holds unmolested reign. The forest turf is kept clear of brush, and dead branches are pruned away from the oaks and beech trees, letting the sun in here and there with a cheerful effect.

Along the outskirts of this grove, between its marginal trees and the lawn, a pretty upland stream, of no insignificant depth, has cut a ravine where ash and dogwood droop and cast the snow of ten thousand blossoms from year to year. Through the boulders and rocks that break up this ravine, the stream descends in riotous waterfalls—sleeps in deep pools—where the speckled trout once led a deliciously tranquil life—and rushes down to the great river in miniature breakers that fill the air with music. Two or three rustic bridges cross this stream, from which pleasant footpaths lead into the woods, where singing birds answer back the sweet chime of the waterfalls, and half tame squirrels leap from bough to bough, rustling the leaves in harmony with all the other wild, sweet sounds.

Back of the house, and away on either hand, lie broad meadows, rich in a second crop of grass—orchards, just beginning to droop under the weight of swelling fruit, and dim woodlands, left to nature only where art fails to give them possibilities of new beauty.

This is all one domain. Its owner was Amos Lander, the man whose terrible fate we have recorded in the last chapter, with that of the steamer in which he had set sail for America. During ten years of his life, Lander had retired from business, wealthy, honored, and in all respects a prosperous man. A large portion of that time he had devoted to the pleasant task of beautifying and improving the place which was hereafter to be the home of his darling child and heiress, Cora Virginia Lander, usually called Virginia, to distinguish her from her cousin of the same appellation, who took the other name of Cora.

During the time that these two young girls had been completing their education under the best teachers of France and Italy, the kind old man had devoted himself heart and soul to embellishing this noble home, which was to be their first grand surprise on returning to their native land.

Amos Lander had been abroad several times during that period; for it was impossible for him to live years together without seeing his child. He was also deeply attached to that other Cora Virginia, who was the child of his only brother, left to his bounty and compassion by that brother on his death-bed. If Amos Lander’s heart was bound up in his daughter, it was good enough and broad enough to enfold this orphan child with a love that was almost paternal. Those who watched his face might have seen by the glow of love that his own child was forever uppermost in that warm heart, but in all his acts he treated the girls exactly as if they had been sisters, usually called them his children, and, with delicate tact, avoided such explanations as would have led to inquiry with regard to their relative claims on him.

Each time that he visited Europe, Lander brought home statues, exquisite marbles, pictures, bronzes and rare plants, all intended to beautify the Paradise he was creating for his child and ward.

Not until the year in which Lander set forth to bring the girls home had that marble house been complete in all its appointments; but for some years before the girls went away it had been the residence of Mrs. Noel Lander, widow of the brother we have spoken of, and the mother of his only child, whom we left drifting upon the ocean in a frail boat, without food and almost without hope.

This woman had never been permitted to feel the poverty to which the death of an insolvent husband might have consigned her. In her prosperity, she had been reckless, extravagant and terribly ambitious. By audacious expenditure she had attempted to conceal a low origin and many humiliating antecedents. But while the younger Lander went backward day by day, everything throve and turned to gold with Amos. At last the younger brother died, heart-broken and ruined, leaving his wife destitute, with a child to encumber her future.

Then Amos Lander came forward, forgetting everything but the brother who had loved this woman, and holding her very faults sacred for his sake. He took the widow into his own family, as if she had been a sister in reality. Her child shared the same nursery and the same lessons with his own. A good and gentle wife welcomed her ungrudgingly to a share of her home, her wealth and such household affection as loving hearts bestow on the bereaved.

But Amos Lander, noble and generous as he was, fell into deep grief a year or two after his brother’s widow became an inmate of his family. The woman whom he had loved with all his life and soul died suddenly, breaking up the richest hopes of his life. He was never the same man after this. Business lost its stimulant, pleasure its zest. The bloom and brightness of his life was gone. While he was in this state of mournful apathy, the widow Lander quietly took possession of all household authority, and, with adroit kindness, settled herself as mistress of the family. If her brother-in-law thought of this at all, he was grateful for it in a passive way, and thus strengthened her position.

But that did not satisfy her craving nature. She would be mistress in her own right, not by sufferance. The rich widower should be brought to acknowledge not only how needful she was to him, but that he could not live without her. As his wife she would possess everything that a nature like hers could desire. His wealth excited her cupidity, and his position was exalted enough to gratify even her grasping aspirations. In order to captivate this man, she brought all the powers of a really fine person and considerable talent into action. But all her efforts were insufficient even to arouse their object to a sense of her wishes. The idea of giving a stepmother to his daughter never entered the good man’s imagination, and if the thought had presented itself, the woman whose false ambition had brought ruin to a beloved brother could not have been its object. A person who could satisfy herself with possession without one honorable effort to deserve it was not likely to attract a man like Lander. Toiling to make the rich man her victim, she was compelled to live upon his bounty, and this galled her ambitious spirit to its depths.

About this time she began to hate that generous man with the quiet, settled hatred which a woman, not scorned but neglected, can feel in all its bitterness. This hatred extended even to his child; but it was never once expressed by word or action. The widow was dispirited, but she did not altogether despair. Time frequently carries great contradictions and improbabilities in his bosom. She could watch and wait. During several years the widow did keep her soul in tolerable patience; but there is no human being so blind as the man who veils his eyes with one grand idea of the heart. Lander had no future save that which centred about his child. To him she was the loveliest and best creature that the sun ever shone upon. Her smile warmed his heart to the core. Her laugh was all the music he ever cared to hear. Her breath, as he kissed her, was like the perfume of roses. Her childish love was absolute despotism; her tiny hand held his very heartstrings. Fortunately for him the child grew up good and true-hearted, like her mother. Beautiful also, but of a different type from the woman he had lost, whose soft black eyes and raven hair haunted him to the day of his death with a sweet remembrance of beauty, perfect in its kind.

As a lily breathes the perfume of kindred lilies, this child possessed all that was brightest and sweetest about her mother, the tender smile and loving expression—while she was like her father’s family in form and glowing warmth of color. These latter traits she shared alike with her less fortunate cousin, but the expression was all her own.

Time wore on and there was little change. Amos Lander was kind to his brother’s widow, and more than kind to his orphan niece, who inherited all her low-born mother’s taste for splendor and thirst for wealth. He loved them, too, in a secondary way, because one looked like his idol and the other had been in many ways useful to her childhood. Besides, the brother who was dead had been very dear to him. So, next to the one being who possessed him supremely, these two persons stood nearest to his affections.

Things were in this state when Amos Lander took his last voyage, with the purpose of bringing the young girls home. He left Mrs. Noel Lander in full charge of the mansion, and at last she felt the joy and glory of supreme command. No person born to luxury could have enjoyed it with the zest which this woman experienced when she found herself mistress of that almost princely establishment. She took her enjoyments to the full as they arose, like a humming-bird that leaves no drop of sweetness in the honeysuckle for want of vigorous shaking. The choicest of everything in that luxurious dwelling had already been appropriated to her own use. Her chamber window looked out on the brightest flower-beds and coolest trees. Of all the rare objects gathered in the mansion, she selected what seemed to her most valuable and gorgeous for her own rooms and personal use. The woman loved her daughter, it is true, but not as she worshipped herself, not as a good mother loves her child.

She was sitting at breakfast—this woman who seemed at this time little better or worse than her fellow-creatures—she was getting anxious about the steamer, and had asked more than once for the morning papers, though it was hardly time for the train which brought them up the river to be in. Still her anxiety failed to diminish an appetite which was both keen and fastidious. She went on with her breakfast with a relish—picked out the dainty white meat from the breast of a nicely-broiled chicken which lay on a plate of china, and disturbed the little island of cream that floated on her coffee with a gold spoon, which she stopped now and then to examine with a sensuous enjoyment of possession.

“I wonder how I ever got along without these things,” she said, laying down her spoon and leaning back to survey the apartment. “How rich and bright it looks. This is the joy of wealth—well-grounded wealth—for, next to that girl, he loves us, and an estate like his can bear dividing—a moiety of it is riches. But then, if he should die without a will—if this belated steamer should be lost, I am a beggar. I, who shudder in my sleep, dreaming of the old times when I was sent barefooted on a cold October morning to search for the cows browsing in some swamp before we could hope for a meagre breakfast of hasty pudding and milk. What if I come to that in the end? Could I do anything to prevent it? So many years of comforts like these have left me helpless as a child. Great Heavens, I wish the steamer would come! it terrifies me to think of this one black chance! David—David, is not that the whistle?”

The waiter thus addressed—who was bringing in a fruit-dish on which lay two magnificent clusters of hot-house grapes, purple and amber-hued, blending their tints in luscious ripeness—came forward and placed the fruit before her.

“No, madam, that is a passing boat, but the train is due now, and John is waiting at the depot. We shall have the papers directly, never fear.”

Mrs. Lander bent over the dish of fruit, touching it daintily with her finger.

“When were these cut?” she inquired, rather sharply.

“At sunset yesterday, I believe, madam.”

“Take them to the kitchen, and order the gardener to bring me some fresh from the vines,” she said; “and see that this does not happen again.”

“Yes, madam. It is not often that you ask for fruit at breakfast; that is how it happened, I suppose.”

“The possibility that I may ask should be enough,” was the haughty answer. “There—there—surely that is the train. Run and meet John. Bring me the papers at once.”

“But the grapes, madam?”

“Well, yes. It will scarcely make a minute’s difference. Go to the gardener. See, John is coming up the terrace steps, walking fast. Go—go—”

The woman was really agitated, and her hand shook as she reached it forth to receive the papers, which John gave her with unusual hesitation.

“Have you read—have you seen anything?” she demanded, in a voice made sharp with anxiety.

She opened the paper as she spoke and looked at the first page.

“An Ocean Steamer Burned at Sea.”

The woman read this and uttered a cry of pain, so sharp and sudden that David, who was half way to the kitchen, ran back in affright. Mrs. Lander had fallen forward in her chair, with one hand pressed to her side; quick spasms swept over her face, and she shook from head to foot. David stooped to take up the paper, which had fallen to the floor; but she snatched it from him, and clenching each hand on an edge of the sheet, made a desperate effort to hold it still and read, with some fortitude, the awful calamity which had befallen her.

“Burned to the water—all lost! All lost! Great Heavens, this is awful!” she cried, dashing the paper from her and sinking back in her chair, shocked and trembling. “Read it,” she added, “read it, and search out if any one was saved—the words run like vipers before my eyes, I cannot make them out! Read, and if they are all dead tell me at once and let the blow kill me.”

David took the paper from her shaking hand and read down the first column, which was half capitals. She watched him with a shrinking terror in her eyes.

“All! all! are they all gone?” she said, with a struggle of the voice.

“Some boats put out, but they were swamped; eighteen persons were found clinging to the bowsprit—”

“Men or women?”

“Men—all men. The women had jumped overboard.”

“My child! my child!”

A pang of womanly anguish broke forth in this cry—for one moment the mother forgot everything save that her child was dead. This outburst of true sorrow touched the men who witnessed it with compassion. David knelt before her and attempted to chafe her cold hands; she wrung them from him with passionate violence and buried her face in them.

“Oh, it has come to pass—it has come to pass! I am a beggar again!”

The two men looked at each other, wondering. The woman dashed her hands apart, burst into a fierce laugh, and slid from the cushions of her chair to the carpet in strong hysterics. She was taken up with her eyes set and the white upper lip curved back from her teeth, shrieking like a maniac. The burden of her cry was, “I am a beggar—I am a beggar!”